If you are like most people, you made the resolution to make 2017 your healthiest year ever.

Let's fast forward to August 1, 2018, you are back on the couch eating chips and drinking soda.

What happened?

Was it a lack of willpower

Is it because you have poor integrity?

Are you mentally weak?

Hardly. You are not alone. Many people decide to set fitness resolutions only to fall flat on their face in a couple of months, weeks, or even days. While on your fitness journey you just stepped into one of the many traps along the way. The great news is that, the traps are not permanent and can easily be overcome.

Let’s take a look at the 5 common traps people face on their path to fitness.

1) Too Much, Too Soon

Changing your lifestyle both with your training and you nutrition can be a lot at once. I find that too often, people bite off more than they can chew when it comes to getting into shape. You decide to dive in head first and you initially commit to going to the gym 5-6 times per week, and only eating chicken and broccoli. Let’s be real, you are trying to make life-altering habits after spending the last month, year, decade with drink in one hand and a cookie in the other while sitting on the couch. You tried to re-program yourself overnight only to fall flat on your face.

Start small. Make realistic changes. Pick one thing to focus on each week and slowly add a new task as you begin to master that task. For example, for week one pick 3 non-consecutive days that you will workout. Focus on this until it becomes second nature to you. Maybe in week four you begin to focus on your nutrition by changing one element each week. If you drink 1 soda per day cut back to 1 soda every other day, until you have kicked the habit.

2) You Underestimated the Effort Required

Make lifestyle changes requires effort and hard work. It won’t come easy. Often,, the choices people make when it comes to working out and nutrition are based on convenience.

Convenience, 9 times out of 10, doesn’t equate to healthy.

Those who are successful in altering their habits and changing their lifestyles have tricks and shortcuts that they use to minimize the effort required. For example, spend one day on the weekend preparing food for the entire week that you can take with you to work. Meal prepping on Sunday, can save you a lot of time, effort, money, and frustration.

3) You Became Bored

We live in a world of instant-gratification. You went to the gym for a week, but you didn’t lose any significant amount of weight so you quit. In order to get where you want to go, it is going to take a lot of hard work and persistence.

Take time to develop goals for yourself. These goals will help keep you on track and motivated when the times get tough. Visualize yourself achieving those goals. Visualization, is a very powerful tool that can be used to achieve great things.

4) Paralysis by Analysis

Personally, I am a perfectionist. I want to know everything and be the best possible coach I can be. For those starting out on a fitness journey often don’t know how to best achieve their results. So they begin to read up on the best ways to lose weight, and build muscle. What they find is, there are hundreds of people on the internet telling them something different. This leads to paralysis by analysis.

At the end of the day, everything works. The key is being consistent. Find what works for you be consistent with it. If what you are doing isn’t working, change it up and figure out what will work. Find a coach to help you along the way sift through all of the information on the internet to determine what is reasonable and what can be tossed aside.

5) You Got Lonely

Success in achieving your fitness goals can sometimes become lonely. You decide to head to the gym while your friends decide that they want to help up the local bar for happy hour. Please realize, that I am not telling you to give up your social life but analyze your social circles. Find those who will be supportive of you and your mission of getting healthier and gravitate towards them.

Also find a good training partner. A good training buddy can make the process a whole lot more enjoyable. A solid workout partner will hold you accountable, motivate you, give you support when needed, and most importantly kick you in the ass when you need it.

Everyone stumbles at some point. We are all human! What separates those who are successful from those who aren’t is their ability to “fail forward.” If you do fail, learn from it and continue to grow and strive to reach your goals.

If you need help getting back on the saddle, I would love to help! Leave a comment below and I will be in touch.